11 February 2018

We knew Jefferson was "friend to neology"; Lincoln, too

In researching the section on definitions for my comp class, I wanted to check on the Jefferson quotation about new words for America. In 1820, the retired President Jefferson (home on his plantation with his slaves) wrote to retired President Adams, "I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony.” (The entire letter is here.) 
In this same letter, he goes on to what always occupied him, vestiges everywhere of the Declaration of Independence: America was an improvement on England. New words come to us because they are valuable to the living people, to the pursuit of happiness, and if the Brits can't see that, too bad for them: 
dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. society is the work-shop in which new ones are elaborated. when an individual uses a new word, if illformed it is rejected in society, if well-formed, adopted, and, after due time, laid up in the depository of dictionaries. and if, in this process of sound neologisation, our transatlantic brethren shall not chuse to accompany us, we may furnish, after the Ionians, a second example of a colonial dialect improving on it’s primitive.—
In many wonderful ways, TJ roared the call of the new, the expansion of the mind. 
Today found this Paul Dickson article from the Saturday Evening Post, "In the words of the Presidents," that illumines Lincoln's views on our American phrasings versus the old word-depositories. The passage is painfully connected to our time in other ways as well, in these days of two Americas. I'll leave it here:
During the July following his inauguration, Lincoln sent a message to Congress opposing secession threatened by Southerners. The message said in part, “With rebellion thus sugar-coated they have been drugging the public mind of their section for more than 30 years, until at length they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government.” The Hon. John D. Defrees, the government printer, was disturbed by the use of sugar-coated. He finally went to Lincoln, with whom he was on good terms, and told him that a message to Congress was a different affair from a speech at a mass meeting in Illinois—that the message became a part of history and should be written with that in mind. “What’s the matter now?” Lincoln inquired of the printer. “Why,” said Defrees, “you have used an undignified expression in the message.” He read the sentence aloud and suggested Lincoln replace the word.
“Defrees,” replied Lincoln, “that word expresses precisely my idea, and I am not going to change it. The time will never come in this country when the people won’t know exactly what ‘sugar-coated’ means.”

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