OLD-FASHIONED WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS. (To THE EDITOR OP THE "
SPECTATOR.")
Sra,—I have often been struck, when moving among the people who throng the London parks on the occasion of public holidays, by the words and expressions which I have heard used around me. I am speaking of words and expressions that are out of the common or old-fashioned, and not such as one would expect to hear in a London crowd. And I have thought that some of these votes populi, which I have noted down from time to time, may be of interest to your readers. On one of these occasions I found myself walking behind two men of the artisan class, who were discussing the case of a fellow-workman who had evidently got into trouble with their employer, and I heard the elder man of the two say, " Well, he bears a good character, and I expect the guvnor will be satisfied with admonishing him." An excellent, old-fashioned word "ad- monish"! A word that has a place in the Authorized Version of the Bible, but not a word one would expect to find in the mouth of a working-man, and a little incongruous in associa- tion with the term guvnor. I have been told, however, that "admonished " was, and perhaps still is, the first fieading in the defaulter's sheet prescribed for the Army, and it is possible that the word is in more general use than might have been supposed. Perhaps some of your readers may be able to throw light on this point. On another occasion a man in front of me was holding up a child's white glove on the end of his stick in order to attract attention to what he had picked up. And presently a woman, coming from the opposite direction, stopped and said to him, " You will find the comrade of that glove hanging on the railings higher up." " Comrade," too, is an excellent word, but I had never previously heard it used in this sense. Most of us, I suppose, would have spoken of the fellow to a glove, or simply of the other glove. I should add that tho New English Dictionary does not give any use of comrade quite analogous to the use of " fellow " as meaning one of a pair of things. On another occasion I heard a decently dressed woman near me, who was talking to a man whom I took to be her father, say, in emphatic tones, "No; I don't like her. She sets far too great store by herself! " An admirable expression that might have fallen from the lips of Mrs. Poyser! But it can hardly be one in ordinary use, and it struck my ear at once as having an old-fashioned distinction about it. A friend suggests that the woman who used it was probably a North-country woman, but I am not aware of any justification for supposing that the expression is peculiar to one part of the country rather than to another.—I am, Sir, .
14 Draycott Place, Cadogan Gardens.
ARTHUR FANSHAWE.
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