The Century Vocabulary Builder Part 4

is literal; "He was a lion in the fight" is figurative. Literal phraseology as a rule appeals to our scientific or understanding faculties; figurative to our emotional faculties. Here again, as with abstraction and concreteness, you should learn to express yourself by either method.

Both have their advantages and their drawbacks. We all admire the man who has observed, and can state, accurately. It is upon this belief of ours in the literal that Defoe shrewdly traffics. (See Appendix 5.) He does not stir us as some writers do, but he gains our implicit confidence. Dame Quickly, on the contrary, makes egregious use of the literal. (See paragraph above EXERCISE - Wordiness III above.) Her facts are accurate, yes; but how strictly, how unsparingly accurate! And how many of them are beside the point! She quite convinces us that the devotee of the literal may be dull.

An advantage of the figurative also is that it may make meanings lucid.

Thus when Burke near the close of his discussion (Appendix 2) wishes to make it clear that by a law of nature the authority of extensive empires is slighter in its more remote territories, he has recourse to a figure of speech: "In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it." More often, however, the function of the figurative is to drive home a thought or a mood of which a mere statement would leave us unmoved--to make us _feel_ it. Thus Burke said of the Americans "Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing." He added: "Here they felt its pulse, and as they found that beat they thought themselves sick or sound."

Had you been one of his Parliamentary hearers, would not that second sentence have made more real and more important the colonial att.i.tude to taxation? The poets of course make frequent and n.o.ble use of the figurative. This is how Coleridge tells us that the descent of a tropical night is sudden:

"The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark."

The words _rush out_ and _at one stride comes_ convert the stars and the darkness into vast beings or at least vast personal forces; the comparisons are so natural as to seem inevitable; we are transported to the very scene and feel the overwhelming abruptness of the nightfall. But if a figure of speech seems artificial, if it is strained or far-fetched or merely decorative, it subtracts from the effectiveness of the pa.s.sage.

Thus when Tennyson says:

"When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free In the silken sail of infancy."

we must stop and ponder before we perceive that what he means is "When I was a happy child." The figure is like an exotic plant rather than a natural outgrowth of the soil; it appears to us something thought up and stuck on; it is a parasite rather than a helper.

Of course, as with abstraction and concreteness, you should develop facility in gliding from literalness to figurativeness and back again. But you are always to remember that your gymnastics are not to militate against verbal concord. You must never set words scowling and growling at each other through injudicious combinations like this: "She was five feet, four and three-quarter inches high, had a small, round scar between her nose and her left cheek-bone, and moved with the lissom and radiant grace of a queen."

EXERCISE - Literal

1. Give the specifications for a house you intend to build.

2. Make a list of comparisons (as to a nest, a haven, a goal) to show what such a house might mean in the life of a man. Expand as many of these comparisons as you can, but do not carry the process to absurd lengths.

(In the figure of the nest you may mention the parent birds, their activities, the nestlings; in the figure of the haven you may mention the quiet, sheltered waters in contrast to the turbulent billows outside; in the figure of the goal you may mention the struggle necessary to reach it.)

3. Describe the looks of the house. Use as many figures of speech as you can. If you can find no appropriate figures, at least make your words specific.

4. Give a surveyor's or a tax a.s.sessor's or a conveyancer's description of a piece of land. Then describe the land through figures of speech which will vivify its outward appearance or its emotional significance to the owner.

5. Observe that the Parable of the Sower (Appendix 3) is an extended figure of speech. Is the main figure effective? Are its detailed applications effective?

6. The Seven Ages of Man (Appendix 4) is also an extended figure of speech. Does it, as Shakespeare intends, bring vividly to your consciousness the course, motives, stages, evolution of a human being's life? There are several subsidiary figures. Do these add force, definiteness to the picture Shakespeare is drawing at that moment?

7. Observe from Appendix 3, Appendix 4, and the sentences listed in Activity 9 for EXERCISE - Abstract above, that a thing meant to be concrete is likely to be stated figuratively.

8. Examine The Castaway (Appendix 5) for its proportionate use of literal and figurative elements. See Activity 2 of EXERCISE - Wordiness III above for a statement of Defoe's purpose. Could he have effected this purpose so well had he employed more figures of speech?

9. Examine Appendix 2 for its use of figures. Are the figures appropriate to the subject matter? Are there enough of them?

10. Galvanize the thought of any sentence or paragraph in editorial (Appendix 1) by the use of a figure of speech.

11. Summarize or ill.u.s.trate your opinion on any of the topics listed in Activity 1 for EXERCISE - Discourse, through the employment of figure of speech.

12. Are these figures effective?

Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

The flower of our young manhood is scaling the ladder of success.

Fair as a star, when only one Is s.h.i.+ning in the sky.

Silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound.

In my head Many thoughts of trouble come, Like to flies upon a plum!

Let me tell you first about those barnacles that clog the wheels of society by poisoning the springs of rect.i.tude with their upas-like eye.

The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Life, like a dome of many-colored gla.s.s, Stains the white radiance of eternity.

Mountains stood out like pimples or lay like broken welts across the habitable ground.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves.

13. Recast the following sentences to eliminate the clas.h.i.+ng of literal and figurative elements:

Life is like a rich treasure entrusted to us, and to sustain it we must have three square meals a day.

She glanced at the mirror, but did not really see herself. She was trying to puzzle out the right course, and could only see as through a gla.s.s darkly.

Arming himself with the sword of zeal and the buckler of integrity, he wrote the letter.

He swept the floor every morning, and was a ray of suns.h.i.+ne in the office.

He also emptied the waste baskets and cleaned the cuspidors.

<3. connotation="">

The connotation of a word is the subtle implication, the emotional a.s.sociation it carries--often quite apart from its dictionary definition.

Thus the words _house_ and _home_ in large measure overlap in meaning, but emotionally they are not equivalents at all. You can say _house_ without experiencing any sensation whatever, but if you utter the word _home_ it will call back, however slightly, tender and cherished recollections. _Bald heads_ and _gray hair_ are both indicative of age; but you would p.r.o.nounce the former in disparaging allusion to elderly persons, and the latter with sentiments of veneration.

You would say, of a clodpole that he plays the _fiddle_, but of Fritz Kreisler that he plays the _violin_. And just as you unconsciously adapt words to feelings in these obvious instances, you must learn, on peril of striking false notes verbally, to do so when distinctions are less gross.

Moreover circ.u.mstance as well as sentiment may control the connotation of a word. A word or phrase may have a double or triple connotation, and depend upon vocal inflection, upon gesture, upon the words with which it is linked, upon the experience of speaker or hearer, upon time, place, and external fact, or upon other forces outside it for the sense in which it is to be taken. You may be called "old dog" in an insulting manner, or (especially if a slap on the shoulder accompanies the phrase) in an affectionate manner. You may properly say, "Calhoun had logic on his side"; add, however, the words "but his face was to the past," and you spoil the sentence,--for _face_ gives a reflex connotation to _side_, slight perhaps and momentary, but disconcerting. Think over the funny stories you have heard. Many of them turn, you will find, on the outcropping of new significance in a phrase because of its environment.

Thus the anecdote of the servant who had been instructed to summon the visiting English n.o.bleman by tapping on his bedroom door and inquiring, "My lord, have you yet risen?" and who could only stammer, "My G.o.d! ain't you up yet?" Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a city had been compelled to send to the p.a.w.nbroker first his overcoat, next his suit, next his silk s.h.i.+rt, and finally his very underclothing--"and then," added the minister, "he came to himself." Only by unresting vigilance can you evade verbal discords, if not of this magnitude, at least of much frequency and stylistic harm.

EXERCISE - Connotation

1. Note the contrast in emotional suggestion that comes to you from hearing the words:

"Sodium chloride" and "salt"

"A test-tube of H2O" and "a cup of cold water"

"A pair of brogans" and "a little empty shoe"

"b.u.mp" and "collide"

"A brilliant fellow" and "a flashy fellow"

"Bungled it" and "did not succeed"

"Tumble" and "fall"