Infanticide Anybody can coin a new word; the difficulty is
to get it into circulation. I seem to have had more luck than I deserve with " cow-pocked," an epithet which, with rather more help than usual from the printer, I applied a fortnight ago to a Certain type of bromide. This adjective, new to our language and not easy—wben you come to think of it—to equip with a meaning, was last week quoted thrice by Sir Harold Nicolson, who gently but firmly rebutted the argument in which it had played its enigmatic part; and so extensive (and so salutary) is Sir Harold's influence on the younger generation that the word —which in many ways is admirablytadapted to the require- ments both of undergraduate leader-writers and of the more ,disillusioned type of poet—can fairly safely be assured of a wider currency. It seems a pity to blast so promising a career; but, since there may be readers whose inability to construe this neologism is bringing on night starvation or even graver ills, I feel it is my duty to disclose that the bromides—which in the same sentence I compared to picadors' horses—were intended to be cow-hocked. A horse thus described is (as every schoolgirl knows) one which, like a cow, gives the impression of being knock-kneed when viewed from behind.
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