These
last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. Against such
abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of
some of them, they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be
readily distinguishable from their healthy neighbors, clinging for
generations to tongues and pens. Of this tenacity there is a notable
exemplification in a passage of Boswell, written nearly a hundred
years ago. Dr. Johnson found fault with Boswell for using the phrase
to _make_ money: "Don't you see the impropriety of it? To _make_ money
is to _coin_ it: you should say _get_ money." Johnson, adds Boswell,
"was jealous of infractions upon the genuine English language, and
prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms; such as _pledging_ myself,
for _undertaking_; _line_ for _department_ or _branch_, as the _civil
line_, the _banking line_. He was particularly indignant against the
almost universal use of the word _idea_ in the sense of _notion_ or
_opinion_, when it is clear that _idea_ can only signify something of
which an image can be formed in the mind. We may have an _idea_ or
_image_ of a mountain, a tree, a building, but we surely cannot have
an idea or image of an _argument_ or _proposition_.
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