Stylistic Differentiation of the Vocabulary



Literary Stratum of Words. Colloquial Words

The word-stock of any given language can be roughly divided into three uneven groups, differing from each other by the sphere of its possible use. The biggest division is made up of neutral words, possessing no stylistic connotation and suitable for any communicative situation, two smaller ones are literaryand colloquial strata respectively.

Literary words serve to satisfy communicative demands of official, scientific, poetic messages, while the_colloquial ones are employed in non-official everyday communication. Though there is no immediate correlation between the written and the oral forms of speech on the one hand, and the literary and colloquial words, on the other, yet, forthe most part, the first ones are mainly observed in the written form, as most literary messages appear in writing. And vice versa: though there are many examples of colloquialisms in writing (informal letters, diaries, certain passages of memoirs, etc.), their usage is associated with the oral form of communication.

Consequently, taking for analysis printed materials we shall find literary words in authorial speech, descriptions, considerations, while colloquialisms will be observed in the types of discourse, simulating (copying) everyday oral communication - i.e., in the dialogue (or interior monologue) of a prose work.

When we classify some speech (text) fragment as literary or colloquial it does not mean that all the words constituting it have a corresponding stylistic meaning. More than that: words with a pronounced stylistic connotation are few in any type of discourse, the overwhelming majority of its lexis being neutral. As our famous philologist L.V. Shcherba once said- a stylistically coloured word is like a drop of paint added to a glass of pure water and colouring the whole of it.

Each of the two named groups of words, possessing a styl-istic meaning, is not homogeneous as to the quality of the meaning, frequency of use, sphere of application, or the number and character of potential users. This is why each one is further divided into the general, i.e. known to and used by most native speakers in generalized literary (formal) or colloquial (informal) communication, and special bulks. The latter ones, in their turn, are subdivided into subgroups, each one serving a rather narrow, specified communicative purpose.

So, among special literary words, as a rule, at least two major subgroups are mentioned. They are:


1. Terms,i. e. words denoting objects, processes, phenomena
of science, humanities, technique.

2. Archaisms, i. e. words, a) denoting historical phenomena
which are no more in use (such as "yeoman", "vassal",
falconet"). These are historical words.

 

b) used in poetry in the XVII-XIX cc. (such as "steed" for
"horse"; "quoth" for "said"; "woe" for "sorrow"). These are
poetic words.

c) in the course of language history ousted by newer syn-
onymic words (such as "whereof" = of which; "to deem" = to
think; "repast" = meal; "nay" = no) or forms ("maketh" =
makes; "thou wilt" = you will; "brethren" = brothers). These
are called archaic words (archaic forms) proper.

Literary words, both general (also called learned, bookish, high-flown) and special, contribute to the message the tone ofsolemnity, sophistication, seriousness, gravity, learnedness. They are used in official papers and documents, in scientific communication, in high poetry, in authorial speech of creative prose.

Colloquial words, on the contrary, mark the message as in-formal, non-official, conversational. Apart from general collo-quial words, widely used by all speakers of the language in their everyday communication (e. g. "dad", "kid", "crony", "fan", "to pop", "folks"), such special subgroups may be mentioned:

1. Slang forms the biggest one. Slang words, used by most speakers in very informal communication, are highly emotive and expressive and as such, lose their originality rather fast and are replaced bуnewer formations. This tendency to syno-nymic expansion results in long chains of synonyms of various degrees of expressiveness, denoting one and the same concept. So, the idea of a "pretty girl" is worded by more than one hundred ways in slang.

In only one novel by S. Lewis there are close to a dozen synonyms used by Babbitt, the central character, in reference to a girl: "cookie", "tomato", "Jane", "sugar", "bird", "cutie", etc.

The substandard status of slang words and phrases, through universal usage, can be raised to the standard colloquial: "pal", "chum," "crony" for "friend"; "heavies", "woolies" for "thick panties"; "booze" for "liquor"; "dough" for "money"; "how's tricks" for "how's life"; "beat it" for "go away" and many many more - are examples of such a transition.

2. Jargonisms stand close to slang, also being substandard, expressive and emotive, but, unlike slang they are used by limited groups of people, united either professionally (in this

 


case we deal with professional jargonisms, or professionalisms), or socially (here we deal with jargonisms proper). In distinction from slang, jargonisms of both types cover a narrow semantic field: in the first case it is that, connected with the technical side of some profession. So, in oil industry, e. g., for the terminological "driller" (буровик) there exist "borer", "digger", "wrencher", "hogger", "brake weight"; for "pipeliner" (тpyбonpoводчик)-"swabber", "bender", "cat", "old cat", "collar-pecker", "hammerman"; for "geologist"-"smeller", "pebble pup", "rock hound", "witcher", etc From all the examples at least two points are evident: professionalisms are formed according to the existing word-building patterns or present existing words in new meanings, and, covering the field of special professional knowledge, which is semantically limited, they offer a vast variety of synonymic choices for naming one and the same professional item

Jargonisms proper are characterized by similar linguistic features, but differ in function and sphere of application. They originated from the thieves' jargon (l'argo, cant) and served to conceal the actual significance of the utterance from the uninitiated. Their major function thus was to be cryptic, secretive. This is why among them there are cases of conscious deformation of the existing words. The so-called back jargon (or back slang) can serve as an example: in their effort to conceal the machinations of dishonest card-playing, gamblers used numerals in their reversed form: "ano" for "one", "owt" for "two", "erth" for "three".

Anglo-American tradition, starting with E. Partridge, a famous English lexicographer, does not differentiate between slang and jargonisms regarding these groups as one extensive stratum of words divided into general slang, used by all, or most, speakers and special slang, limited by the professional or social standing of the speaker . This debate appears to concentrate more on terminology than on essence. Indeed slang (general slang) and jargonisms (special slang) have much in common, are emotive, expressive, unstable, fluctuating, tending to expanded synonymity within certain lexico-semantic groups and limited to a highly informal, substandard communication So it seems appropriate to use the indicated terms as synonyms.

3. Vulgarisms are coarse words with a strong emotive mean-ing, mostly derogatory, normally avoided in polite conversa-tion. History of vulgarisms reflects the history of social ethics. So, in Shakespearean times people were much more lin-guistically frank and disphemistic in their communication than in the age of Enligtenment, or the Victorian era, famous for

 


its prudish and reserved manners. Nowadays words which were labelled vulgar in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are considered such no more. In fact, at present we are faced with the reverse of the problem: there are practically no words banned from use by the modern permissive society. Such intensifiers as "bloody", "damned", "cursed", "hell of, formerly deleted from literature and not allowed in conversation, are not only welcomed in both written and oral speech, but, due to constant repetition, have lost much of their emotive impact and substandard quality. One of the best-known American editors and critics Maxwell Perkins, working with the serialized 1929 magazine edition of Hemingway's novel A. Farewell to Arms found that the publishers deleted close to a dozen words which they considered vulgar for their publication. Preparing the hard-cover edition Perkins allowed half of them back ("son of a bitch", "whore", "whorehound," etc.). Starting from the late 'fifties no publishing house objected to any coarse or obscene expressions. Consequently, in contemporary West European and American prose all words, formerly considered vulgar for public use (including the four-letter words), are even approved by the existing moral and ethical standards of society and censorship.

4.Dialectal words arenormative and devoid of any stylistic meaning in regional dialects, but used outside of them, carry a strong flavour of the locality where they belong. In Great Britain four major dialects are distinguished: Lowland Scotch, Northern, Midland (Central) and Southern. In the USA three major dialectal varieties are distinguished: New England, Southern and Midwestern (Central, Midland). These classifica-tions do not include many minor local variations. Dialects markedly differ on the phonemic level: one and the same pho-neme is differently pronounced in each of them. They differ also on the lexical level, having their own names for locally existing phenomena and also supplying locally circulating synonyms for the words, accepted by the language in general. Some of them have entered the general vocabulary and lost their dialectal status ("lad", "pet", "squash", "plaid").

Each of the above-mentioned four groups justifies its la-bel of special colloquial words as each one, due to varying reasons, has application limited to a certain group of people or to certain communicative situations.

Assignments for Self-Control

1. What can you say about the meaning of a word and its relation to the concept of an entity?


2. What types of lexical meaning do you know and what
stipulates their existence and differentiation?

3. What connotational meanings do you know? Dwell on
each of them, providing your own examples.

4. What is the role of the context in meaning actualization?

5. What registers of communication are reflected in the styl-
stic differentiation of the vocabulary?

6. Speak about general literary words illustrating your
elaboration  with examples from nineteenth- and twentieth-
century prose.

7. What are the main subgroups of special literary words?

8. What do you know of terms, their structure, meaning,
functions?

9. What are the fields of application of archaic words and
forms?

 

10. Can you recognize general colloquial words in a literary
text? Where do they mainly occur?

11. What are the main characteristics of slang?

12. What do you know of professional and social jargonisms?

13. What connects the stock of vulgarisms and social
history?

14. What is the place and the role of dialectal words in the
national language? in the literary text?

15. To provide answers to the above questions find words
belonging to different stylistic groups and subgroups:

a) in the dictionary, specifying its stylistic mark ("label"); b) in

your reading material, specifying the type of discourse, whereyou found it - authorial speech (dialogue, narration), description, etc

EXERCISES

I. State the type and function of literary words in the following examples:

1. "I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It
isnot pleasant to my feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings." (D.)

2. "I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad
people into good people at a moment's notice. As a man sows so

let him reap." (O. W.)

3. Isolde the Slender had suitors in plenty to do her
lightest hest. Feats of arms were done daily for her sake.

Tоwin her love suitors were willing to vow themselves to perdi-tion. But Isolde the Slender was heedless of the court thus paid to her. (L.)

4. "He of the iron garment," said Daigety, entering, "is
bounden unto you, MacEagh, and this noble lord shall be
bounden also." (W. Sc.)


5. If manners maketh man, then manner and grooming
maketh poodle. (J. St.)

6. "Thou art the Man," cried Jabes, after a solemn pause,
leaning over his cushion. "Seventy times didst thou gapingly
contort thy visage - sevently times seven did I take council
with my soul - Lo! this is human weakness: this also may be
absolved. The first of the seventy first is come. Brethren-
execute upon him the judgement written. Such honour have all
His saints." (E. Br.)

7. At noon the hooter and everything died. First, the pulley
driving the punch and shears and emery wheels stopped
its lick and slap. Simultaneously the compressor providing the
blast for a dozen smith-fires went dead. (S. Ch.)

8. "They're real!" he murmured. "My God, they are abso-
lutely real!" Erik turned. "Didn't you believe that the neutron
existed?" "Oh, I believed," Fabermacher shrugged away the
praise. "To me neutrons were symbols n with a mass of
mn= 1.008. But until now I never saw them." (M. W.)

9. Riding back I saw the Greeks lined up in column of
march. They were all still there. Also, all armed. On long
marches when no action threatened, they had always piled their
armour, helmets and weapons in their carts, keeping only
their swords; wearing their short tunics (made from all kinds of
stuff, they had been so long from home) and the wide straw
hats Greeks travel in, their skins being tender to sun. Now they
had on corselets or cuirasses, helmets, even grades if they owned
them, and their round shields hung at their backs. (M. R.)

10. There wasn't a man-boy on this ground tonight did
not have a shield he cast, riveted or carved himself on his
way to his first attack, compounded of remote but nonetheless
firm and fiery family devotion, flag-blown patriotism and
cocksure immortality strengthened by the touchstone of very
real gunpowder, ramrod minnie-ball and flint. (R. Br.)

11. Into the organpipes and steeples
Of the luminous cathedrals,

Into the weathercocks' molten mouths Rippling in twelve-winded circles, Into the dead clock burning the hour Over the urn of sabbaths... Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever Glory glory glory

The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder.

(D. Th.)

12. If any dispassionate spectator could have beheld the
countenance of the illustrious man, whose name forms the


leading feature of the title of this work, during the latter partof this conversation, he would have been almost induced to wonder that the indignant fire that flashed from his eyes, did not melt the glasses of his spectacles - so majestic was his wrath. His nostrils dilated, and his fists clenched involuntarily, as he heard himself addressed by the villain. But he restrained himself again - he did not pulverize him.

"Here," continued the hardened traitor, tossing the licence at Mr. Pickwick's feet; "get the name altered - take home the lady-do for Tuppy." (D.)

II. Think of the type of additional information about the speaker or communicative situation conveyed by the following general and special colloquial words:

1. "She's engaged. Nice guy, too. Though there's a slight
difference in height. I'd say a foot, her favor." (T. C.)

2. "You know Brooklyn?"

"No. I was never there. But I had a buddy at Myer was from Brooklyn." (J.)

3. I didn't really do anything this time. Just pulled the
dago out of the river. Like all dagos, he couldn't swim. Well,
the fellow was sort of grateful about it. Hung around like a dog.
About six months later he died of fever. I was with him. Last
thing, just as he was pegging out, he beckoned me and whispered
some excited jargon about a secret. (Ch.)

4. "Here we are now," she cried, returning with the tray.
"And don't look so miz." (P.)

5. "What's the dif," he wanted to know. (Th. S.)

6. Going down the stairs he overheard one beamed freshman
he knew talking to another. "Did you see that black cat with
the black whiskers who had those binocks in front of us? That's
mycomp prof." (В. М.)

7. "Don't you intend to get married?" asked Eugene curi-
ously. "I don't know," she replied, "I'd want to think about
that. A woman-artist is in a d-of a position anyway," using the
letter d only to indicate the word "devil". (Dr.)

8. "There we were... in the hell of a country-pardon me-
- country of raw metal.

...It's like a man of sixty looking down his nose at a youth ofthirty and there's no such God-darned - pardon me - mistake as that. (G.)

9. "All those medical bastards should go through the ops
theyput other people through. Then they wouldn't talk so much
bloody nonsense or be so damnably unutterably smug." (D. C.)

 


10. "I thought of going to the flicks," she said. "Or we
could go for a walk if it keeps fine." (J. Br.)

11. "Let me warn you that the doc is a frisky bacheldore,
Carol. Come on, now, folks, shake a leg. Let's have some
stunts or a dance or something." (S. L.)

12. "Goddamn sonofabitching stool," Fishbelly screamed,
raining blows on Bert's head. "Lawd Gawd in heaven, I'll kill,
kill every chink-chink goddamn chinaman white man on this
sonofabitching bastard earth." (Wr.)

13. There was a fearful mess in the room, and piles of
unwashed crocks in the kitchen. (A. T.)

14. "Of course I've spent nine years around the Twin
Cities - took my B. A. and M. D. over at the U, and had my
internship in a hospital in Minneapolis." (S. L.)

15. "How long did they cook you?" Dongeris stopped short
and looked at him. "How long did they cook you?"

"Since eight this morning. Over twelve hours." "You didn't unbutton then? After twelve hours of it?" "Me? They got a lot of dancing to do before they'll get anything out of me." (Т. Н.)

16. "Nix on that," said Roy. "I don't need a shyster
quack to shoot me full of confidence juice. I want to go
through on my own steam." (В. М.)

17. "Go in there, you slob. I hope you get a hell of a lot of
fun out of it. He looks too damned sick." (H.)

18. Just then Taylor comes down. "Shut up and eat," my
mother says to him before he can open his mouth. In less
than five minutes my father is back. "Keep the kids home,"
he says.

"My God," my mother says wearily, "them under foot all day." (Sh. Gr.)

19. "Don't wanna sleep, Don't wanna die, just wanna go
a-travelin' through the pastures of the sky." (T. C.)

20. "Never heard anything so bloody daft in all my life."
(J. Br.)

21. "You know. The mummies - them dead guys that getburied in them toons and all." (S.)

22. His expenses didn't go down...washing cost a packet,
and you'd be surprised the amount of linen he needed. (S. M.)

23. "We'll show Levenford what my clever lass can do. I'm
looking ahead, and I can see it. When we've made ye the head
scholar of the Academy, then you'll see what your father
means to do wi' you. But ye must stick in to your lessons, stick in
hard." (A. C.)

24. Wee modest crimson tipped flow'r,


Thou's met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem:

To spare thee now is past my pow'r

Thou bonnie gem. (R. B.)

25. "That's so, my lord. I remember having tae du much the same thing, mony years since, in an inquest upon a sailing ves-selthat ran aground in the estuary and got broken up by bumping herself to bits in a gale. The insurance folk thocht that the accident wasna a'tegither straightforward. We tuk it upon oorsels tae demonstrate that wi' the wind and tide setti' as they did, the boat should ha' been wellaway fra' the shore if they started at the hour they claimed tae ha' done. We lost the case, but I've never altered my opeenion." D. S.)

Ш. Compare the neutral and the colloquial (or literary) modes of expression:

1. "Also it will cost him a hundred bucks as a retainer."
"Huh?" Suspicious again. Stick to basic English.
"Hundred dollars," I said. "Iron men. Fish. Bucks to

the number of one hundred. Me no money, me no come. Savvy?" I began to count a hundred with both hands. (R. Ch.)

2. "...some thief in the night boosted my clothes whilst
I slept. I sleep awful sound on the mattresses you have here."

"Somebody boosted...?"

"Pinched. Jobbed. Swiped. Stole," he says happily. (К. К.)

3. "Now take fried, crocked, squiffed, loaded, plastered,
blotto, tiddled, soaked, boiled, stinko, viled, polluted."

"Yes," I said.

"That's the next set of words I am decreasing my vocabulary by," said Atherton. "Tossing them all out in favor of-"

"Intoxicated?" I supplied.

"I favor fried," said Atherton. "It's shorter and monosyl-labic, even though it may sounda little harsher to the squeamish-minded."

"But there are degrees of difference," I objected. "Just being tiddled isn't the same as being blotto, or-"

"When you get into the vocabulary-decreasing business," he interrupted, "you don't bother with technicalities. You throw out the whole kit and caboodle - I mean the whole bunch," he hastily corrected himself. (P. G. W.)

4. "Do you talk?" asked Bundle. "Or are you just strong
silent?"

"Talk?" said Anthony. "I babble. I murmur. I burble-


like a running brook, you know. Sometimes I even ask questions." (Ch.)

5. "So you'll both come to dinner? Eight fifteen. Dinny,
we must be back to lunch. Swallows," added Lady Mont round
the brim of her hat and passed out through the porch.

"There's a house-party," said Dinny to the young man's elevated eyebrows. "She means tails and a white tie." "Oh! Ah! Best bib and tucker, Jean." (G.)

6. "What do you really contemplate doing?"
"No Plaza? Not even when I'm in the chips?"
"Why are you so rich?" (J. O'H.)

7. "Obviously an emissary of Mr. Bunyan had obtained clan-
destine access to her apartment in her absence and purloined
the communication in question." It took Lord Uffenham some
moments to work this out, but eventually he unravelled it and
was able to translate it from his butler's language. What the
man was trying to say was that some low blister, bought with
Bunyan's gold, had sneaked into the girl's flat and pinched
the bally things. (P. G. W.)

8. "I say, old boy, where do you hang out?" Mr. Pickwick
responded that he was at present suspended at the George and
Vulture. (D.)

9. "The only thing that counts in his eyes is solid achieve-
ment. Sometimes I have been prostrate with fatigue. He
calls it idleness. I need the stimulation of good company:
He terms this riff-raff. The plain fact is, I am misunderstood."
(D. du M.)

10. "The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success,
but it has what may seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it
requires a certain financial outlay."

"He means," I translated to Corky, "that he has a pippin of an idea but it's going to cost a bit." (P. G. W.)

11. Mrs. Sunbury never went to bed-she retired, but
Mr. Sunbury who was not quite so refined as his wife always
said: "Me for Bedford." (S. M.)

12. "He tried those engineers. But no soap. No answer."
(J. O'H.)

13. "You want to know what I think? I think you're nuts.
Pure plain crazy. Goofy as a loon. That's what I think." (J.)

14. The famous Alderman objected to the phrase in
Canning's inscription for a Pitt Memorial "He died poor" and
wished to substitute "He expired in indigent circumstances."
(Luc.)

15. "I am Alpha and Omega - the first and the last," thesolemn voice would announce. (D. du M.)

 


16. The tall man ahead of him half-turned saying "Gre't
God! I never, I never in all my days seen so many folks."
Mr. Munn thought that he, too, had never seen so many people,
never before. (R. W.)

17. It may sound to some like cold-blooded murder of the
English tongue, but American kids have been speaking a
language of their own since they annoyed their Pilgrim parents
at Plymouth Rock.

Ask a teen-ager today what he thought of last night's rock show. If he liked it, it was "wicked" or "totally awesome". But if he didn't, it was "groady" or "harsh".

Young people punctuate their sentences with slang. They drop phrases that would make Professor Henry Higgins turn over in his grave. Twice.

"It's just like a dictionary that only teen-agers under-stand," said Michael Harris, 17, a high school student in Rich-mond, Va. "You go home and you have to spell it for your parents. They don't even know what you're talking about."

But this has been going on for years. Slang is as old as English itself, says Stuart Berg Flexner, editor-in-chief of the Random House Dictionary, author of the Dictionary of American Slang.

It offended puritan parents that their Pilgrim children look their traditional farewell-God be with you - and turned itinto "good-bye", Flexner says.

Today's words are obsolete tomorrow.

"I may call somebody a jerk, but today they would call him a nerd," says Flexner, 54. "Each generation seems to want to have someof its own words."

"It's not so much to shut out adults - although that's a part of it. It gives them identity with their own age group. They sort of belong to their own club," he says.

There is valleytalk and preppyspeak, jocktalk and street language.

Take Moon Unit Zappa's Valley Talk. The daughter of famed rocker Frank Zappa was 14 years old when her dad sat her before a microphone and documented her language in a pop song.

"Gag me with a spoon," she says to show disgust. "Groady to the max."

Legions of youngsters across America picked it up. The song, andlanguage, was a coast-to-coast hit. But that killed it.

"Valley Speak is out," reports Jane Segal, 16, a reformed Valley Girl at Santa Monica High School. "It went out after the song was played to death. It was really popular, and then eve-ryone got so sick of the stupid song they quit saying that stuff."

 


"No one ever says 'Gag me' anymore," she says. "'Totally' is still hanging on, and everyone uses 'like'. They say it everywhere, just sprinkle it in. I do it subconsciously, I use it like 'um."

Flexner considers slang a reflection of American pop culture. Words come and go like No. 1 hit songs. Once a word is widely known it may he dropped, relegated to the used-slang bin alongside "swell" from the '50s and "groovy" from the '60s.

Others stick around like golden oldies.

"There are classics. Once a good phrase comes along it's pretty hard to replace it," says Scott Wenger, 19, a New York University student. "'Flipped out' still means crazy and 'pulling an allnighter' still means to study hard until all hours of the morning for exams."

Teen-agers may dream up slang, but adults use it too. Julia Shields, 42, a high school English teacher in Charlottes-ville, Va., is an avowed user.

"I love slang, think it's colorful, wonderful, metaphoric. Some of it is quite clever," she says. "I hate it, but I call everything 'about It's such a horrible, vague, meaningless word. But I use it in every sentence."

Slang is not the talk of board rooms and diplomatic ses-sions. Because young people spend more time informally than adults, and slang is a product of relaxing the rules, high schools and college campuses are breeding grounds for it. (C. R.)

IV. Speak about the difference between the contextual and the dictionary meanings of italicized words:

1. Mr. James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished
to live as far as possible from the city of which he was the
citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin
mean, modern and pretentious. (J. J.)

2. He does all our insurance examining and they say he's
some doctor. (S. L.)

3. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic.
(S. L.)

4. "What do you think?" The question pops their heads up.
(K. K.)

5. We tooled the car into the street and eased it into
the ruck of folks. (R. W.)

6. He inched the car forward. (A. H.)

7. "Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as
he is so rich. And - and - we drifted into a sort of under-
standing-I suppose I should call it an engagement-"

"You may have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with it." (B. Sh.)


 


8. He sat with the strike committee for many hours in a
smoky room and agonized over ways and means. (M.G.)

9. Betty loosed fresh tears. (Jn. B.)

 

10. When the food came, they wolfed it down rapidly. (A. M.)

11. He had seen many places and been many things:
railroad foreman, plantation overseer, boss mechanic, cow-
puncher, and Texas deputy-sheriff. (J. R.)

12. Station platforms were such long, impersonal, dirty,
ugly things, with too many goodbyes, lost hearts, and tears
stamped into the concrete paving. (A. S.)

13. "Let me say, Virginia, that I consider your conduct
most unbecoming. Nor at all that of a pure young widow."

"Don't be an idiot, Bill. Things are happening." "What kind of things?" "Queer things." (Ch.)

14. I need young critical things like you to punch me
up. (S. L.)

15. Oh! the way the women wear their prettiest every
thing!(T.C.)

Lexical Stylistic Devices


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